Having worked with dozens of startups, "build-your-own-workflow" is a giant mess of one sentence tasks in Linear or Asana. The debate over user stories seems l

Having worked with dozens of startups, "build-your-own-workflow" is a giant mess of one sentence tasks in Linear or Asana. The debate over user stories seems like one of semantics. Stories exist regardless of whether they are called "story". Requirements exist regardless of whether people get clarity and consensus on them before writing code. Linear says don't write user stories, that they "obscure" the work that needs to be done. But clarifying use cases and requirements is the opposite of obscuring – it's specifying. They say that there's no need to articulate product requirements for common features like "todo lists". Who believes that? To-do lists can vary greatly in their functionality. I've worked with enough companies for long enough to know that people always have different ideas for how something is going to work, even for "simple" things. Linear also says product discussions should be kept out of Linear. Fair enough. But then what is Linear really providing? Not much. Why use it?